My Response To The Question "Is Double Dutch REALLY A Black Girl Thing?

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents my response to the question "Is Double Dutch really a Black girl thing?"

The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.

Click for the closely related pancocojams post https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/05/did-black-people-really-invent-double.html (new title: "Is Double Dutch REALLY A Black Girl Thing? (Online Comments About Race And Recreational Double Dutch In The United States).

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MY RESPONSE TO THIS QUESTION "IS DOUBLE DUTCH REALLY A BLACK GIRL THING?"
by Azizi Powell, May 9, 2022 [edited May 10, 2022]

In answering the question "Is Double Dutch really a Black girl thing", I've put aside the race/s of the people who were the first to come up with the concept of jumping in the middle of two vines or two ropes (In various online articles that I've read the Egyptians, or the Phoenicians, or the Chinese have been said to be the first to come up with this concept.). Instead, I've focused on the 20th century and 21st century.

At some point -probably long before the 20th century- English speaking residents of New Amsterdam (New York City) began to insultingly refer to the activity of jumping in between two ropes that Dutch speaking children were doing as "Double Dutch". The English speaking people gave that recreational activity the name "Double Dutch" which was considered an insult meaning "gibberish" abecause they couldn't understand the Dutch language that was used for the songs that the Dutch children sang while jumping in between two ropes.

These Dutch children were White.

While Black people in the United States didn't originate the activity of jumping in between two ropes while singing or chanting, we "took it and ran with it", introducing new styles of jumping Double Dutch, and dancing in between those two spinning ropes, and/or introducing  new ways of spinning those ropes. We (Black people in the United States) also introduced new rhymes (or versions of older rhymes) that met our Black aesthetics, including self-bragging and dissing rhymes adapted from R&B and Hip Hop music.

By at least the 1950s in many urban areas of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Black people (mostly Black females) began performing funkier forms of Double Double. In other words, Black girls re-baptized traditional Double Dutch in the name of Blackness and made it part of our culture. You can call this style of Double Dutch "new school Double Dutch or Double Dutch 2".

At the same time that (mostly Black girls particularly in Northern cities in the United States) were having fun jumping that new school Double Dutch, (mostly)  White girls in the United States (and elsewhere) continued to jump traditional Double Dutch the old way without the funky tricks, funky dances, and funky rhymes that Black girls had added to the mix.

In the early 1970s, some Black men decided to take that funky form of Double Dutch that Black girls were playing for fun and turn it into a formal competitive sport. That form of Double Dutch can be called "Double Dutch 3- the sport". Instead of being and recreational activity that children & pre-teen initiated and performed, Double Dutch 3- the sport was organized by adults and (eventually) appears to mostly be performed by young adults. For some reason, Double Dutch 3-the sport also differs from traditional Double Dutch and new school Double Dutch because it doesn't feature any songs or rhymes that are sung or chanted while doing those forms of Double Dutch. While new school Double Dutch (if not traditional Double Dutch) included some competition, Double Dutch 3-the sport is all about Competition with a capital "C". Also, unlike both of the earlier forms of Double Dutch which were almost exclusively female activities, Double Dutch 3- the sport welcomes male participation. Presumably, female Double Dutchers and other folk don't make assumptions about the sexual orientation of male Double Dutchers such as the assumptions that were made about boys who Double Dutched "back in the days of the old school and new school forms of that activity.

Given the history of Double Dutch in the United States, when people say that "Double Dutch is a Black girls thing", they are both right and wrong. It depends on when (and where) they are talking about i.e what form of Double Dutch they are referring to.

New School Double Dutch should rightfully be considered an element of Black American culture since Black American females adapted the earlier Double Dutch activity to better fit Black American aesthetics.  Also, the sport of Double Dutch (at least as it was developed in the 1970s if not as it is now) can be considered as (largely, if not totally) coming from Black American culture since it's undeniable that some Black men founded that sport based on the tricks (stunts) and the informal competitive experiences that were (and still are?) associated with new school Double Dutch.

Since the 1970s, United States mass media (including television ads, television shows, and movies) has recognized African American dominance in new school Double Dutch. However, at times (as I believe occurred in the 2014 The Real television episode that featured a Double Dutch team of three White young women*), United States mass media choses to promote White people instead of Black people who were the true inventors of (and also usually the most skilled performers) of that new style of Double Dutch.

In my opinion, when non-Black people perform new school Double Dutch, I don't necessarily consider it cultural appropriation if it is done for recreational purposes and not for money or for exposure that leads to money and/or status.
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* Here are links to two YouTube videos of that The Real television show episode that I referred to above:

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I0c4OfX6JU "Tamera Shows Off Her Double Dutch Skills" published by The Real Daytime, Sep 29, 2014

and

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6FqfU13fN8&t=2s "These Triplets Are Double Dutch Champs!, published by The Real Daytime,Sep 29, 2014"
-snip-
Notes about the term "traditional" and "new school" in this post:

I originally referred to "traditional Double Dutch" as "old school Double Dutch", but changed that terminology in part because "traditional"  is  the term that a French (sports) Double Dutcher used in the comment quoted below in this pancocojams post comment section. I also switched to the word "traditional" because in African American culture the term "old school" is usually used as a referent for some element of cuture that is considered "old" but also fondly regarded. As such, I don't believe that that definition fits the old ways of doing Double Dutch that Black girls began to adapt in the 1950s through the early 2000s (and maybe are still adapting if indeed recreational Double Dutch is still a thing for African American girls).   

The referent "new school" can be a positive or negative referent in African American Vernacular English for a new way of doing something that already exist. However, that term appears to be used much less often than "old school".

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